Boston's Stolen Masterpieces May Not Have Gone Far

The empty frames hanging on the walls of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston aren't a sign of work in progress. They're a symbol of the treasures lost and those that, 35 years later, might still be returned. At 1:24am on March 18, 1990, two thieves disguised as police officers were permitted entry into the museum before handcuffing the two night guards and making off with 13 artworks from masters including Rembrandt, Vermeer, Manet, and Degas, together worth at least $1 billion, according to some estimates, per the Art Newspaper. The case remains the biggest unsolved art heist in history, per People. But the museum's longtime security director, Anthony Amore, believes the paintings will find their way home.

The museum continues to offer a $10 million reward for information leading to the recovery of the artworks—including Rembrandt's only known seascape and other paintings cut from their frames in the Dutch Room—and receives regular tips. "I speak to the FBI about it every day," says Amore, who has extensive experience working in national security, intelligence, and crisis management. Though people love sharing their wide-ranging theories about what happened, chances are the artworks were stolen by "common local criminals," apparently now dead, and didn't get too far from Boston, Amore tells People. "The overwhelming number of cases in the United States indicate that [pieces of art] stay pretty close to where they were stolen."

There's "overwhelming evidence" that alleged gangster Robert Gentile had information about the heist, but "he took it to his grave" in 2021 without revealing what it was, Amore says, adding, "We are looking for leads and tips from people who have actual information. We appeal to people who have the facts." He adds he's not interested in the fate of those who possess the stolen works, noting, "The only thing in the world I'm interested in is getting the paintings back on the wall." In the meantime, the empty frames—repaired, cleaned, and rehung amid an ongoing restoration of the Dutch Room, per WBUR—hang as "symbols of hope," he says, that the blank space they surround might eventually be filled, per People. (More art heist stories.)